


Yang and Yin

by tainry



Category: Transformers Animated (2007)
Genre: AU, Bondage, Brief Torture, M/M, PNP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 14:16:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6082479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tainry/pseuds/tainry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prowl is caught by Lockdown and hurt. Optimus offers comfort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yang and Yin

**Author's Note:**

> Oooo, one of the first, if not THE first TFA fics I wrote. This came into my head just at the sneak peeks of Lockdown's character design and bio, before that episode even aired.

Prowl shadowed through the abandoned factory. It was strange how the humans packed themselves in to some spaces so tightly, yet left vast areas of their planet sparsely populated or not utilized at all. Not just this factory was abandoned, this entire city was. In this case, though, the abandonment was understandable. The radiation here was harmful to humans, although other forms of organic life had sprung up in profusion. Prowl found the radiation invigorating – he merely kept his visual inputs tuned toward the less energetic end of the spectrum to avoid the glare. 

Outside the building, a small impact crater still smoldered, but there was no sign of a natural meteorite. And no sign yet of something not composed of nickel-iron, either. Prowl stayed careful. Keeping to the rafters, full stealth mode engaged, he ghosted to the far end and scanned through the window. 

When the ‘bot behind him emerged from his own cloaking, Prowl sensed him instantly and spun to face him. Already too late.

~/\/~/\/~/\/~

Pain was the first thing he felt. 

“Online again?” said an unfamiliar voice. “Good.”

His optics weren’t functioning. The covering felt flimsy, non-metallic, yet he couldn’t see. Prowl tried to get a fix on his captor from the sound; voice, movements, the echoes from the walls. It gave him the impression of sinuous bulk, but not much else.

Prowl tested his limbs surreptitiously, not surprised to find that he couldn’t move. A square column’s corner gouged his back. There wasn’t even much play in hip or shoulder gimbals, and the bindings, whatever they were, were hot. Uncomfortably so. Chemoreceptors picked up the reek of scorching alloy. Something sharp and multiply-pronged was imbedded in his neck, disabling both vocalizer and transmitter, perhaps it blinded him as well. His mouth was held open by a spherical object jammed inside and secured with more of the flimsy non-metallic strapping.

A presence loomed close, the heat of a Cybertronian body, and the straps around his optics and mouth were jerked savagely.

“I like these,” his captor said, tugging at the straps again. “The material you’re wondering about is the skin of organic life forms. Flayed from their dead carcasses, chemically preserved. But they still smell like death. I like them.”

A metal hand touched him. Prying at the seams of his armor. He felt minute probes worm into him, scanning his inner workings. 

“Blades,” said the voice. Dismissive. Taking inventory. “Hn. Boosters.” The worm probes wriggled deeper. Prowl refused to move. The hand slid up his outstretched arms, down his legs, then back up to his torso. Lingered on his abdomen.

“Interesting.” The worms massed around his decoy mechanism – part holographic emitter, part short-range teleporter. 

No, Prowl thought, as something sharp and curved slowly pierced his armor. Millimeters at a time, the wound was lengthened, pried wider. He found he couldn’t shut his pain sensors off. Nor could he scream. The worms tugged at their prize, uncoupling each circuit, every pin and cable. 

“I suppose I should kill you.” The worms pulled the decoy unit free. Prowl felt the cold air on inner surfaces and shuddered against the restraints as the shiv jerked laterally across his abdomen, tearing the opening wider still to allow the extraction. The worms retracted but the hand remained pressed to his armor. “I should, but…you’re…” Pliable mass crushed him against the column. Hand and shiv toyed with him, turned his head side to side, scratched slowly down his body. “Tempting.” The mass shifted, drifted lower. Jaw plates clamped down on the edge of his abdomen by the torn wound. Prowl couldn’t scream, but he tried. 

The concussion of an explosion ripped through the factory. With a low growl the organic skin was clawed from his optics and mouth, the sharp object retracted from his neck, and his captor, with his decoy unit, was gone. 

“Slagging weirdo,” Prowl muttered.

~/\/~/\/~/\/~

Prowl refused to let them bring Sari. He wasn’t that badly damaged, and he didn’t want the human child to see the marks that had been scorched into his armor by what Ratchet called energon chains. Ratchet patched the hole in his body, but shook his head over the chances of getting a replacement for the decoy unit any time soon.

“I’ll just have to modify my tactics,” Prowl said, sliding off the repair table. Four pairs of worried optics watched him as he left the medi-lab. 

~/\/~/\/~/\/~

Optimus approached slowly, sure to make just enough noise to not be thought of as sneaking up on him. Prowl stood on the catwalk that ran around the main area of their new, albeit makeshift, base at the level of the highest windows. Only this side of the old warehouse had anything like a view. Moonlight and city lights twinkled faintly through the fog on the water, glimpsed between other buildings. 

“Prowl?”

No answer but a tightening of the shoulders. Optimus stopped beside him, close. Prowl’s armor had healed, but he’d been so quiet since the incident in Chernobyl. Quiet even for Prowl. It was making Bumblebee jittery, which made Bulkhead unhappy. And Ratchet was being uncommonly kind and gently sad, which was freaking everyone out. 

Optimus leaned closer, placing one hand on Prowl’s chest, the other in the center of his back. He bent and touched his fore-helm to Prowl’s temporal plate. Prowl was made of pointy bits, but Optimus wasn’t especially dentable. Between his hands pulsed the spark he knew so distinctly as Prowl. Independent, contemplative. A little too apt to take action – not without thought, but without warning. Prowl stiffened for a moment, then relaxed into the touch, placing his hands over Optimus’ on his chest. 

“I’m all right, Prime,” he said softly. “I want to know who that was. So I can avoid being caught like that again.”

“Reasonable,” Optimus agreed. Moving the hand on Prowl’s back in slow circles.

Prowl turned toward him, tilting his head so their facial plates nearly touched. Optimus gathered him close. 

“…Nothing alike,” Prowl murmured, as though to himself, running his fingers over Optimus’ chest, tracing the center seal. He shivered, and transmitted a brief flash of memory – Prime cold and colorless – before returning the embrace with all his strength. “Nothing alike,” he said again, firmly. 

Understanding the rest of the sentence Prowl couldn’t be bothered to verbalize, Optimus nodded, smiling. They knelt, fitting their contours together as data locks opened and interface keys extended, energy pulsing back and forth. Both of them AllSpark-born, and now AllSpark-touched on this strange, wet planet. Fore-helms touched, fingers interlaced, thought-lattices cascaded together. Their neural networks grew fractal, fuzzy boundaries, merging, expanding. Optimus moaned, wringing a softer, echoing cry from Prowl. 

Electrical, then quantum pressure built up between and within them. Probability waves rose higher and higher until they crashed, scouring all sense of time or space, leaving them with the vast euphoria of the direct experience of the wholeness of the universe. Every part of them entangled with everything else.

It couldn’t last. All their circuits overloaded - gently rather than catastrophically. Their united shout startled Ratchet, who passed below, now with a half-grin on his face. Little blue static discharges rolled off their armor and dissipated into the darkness like the fireflies Sari had caught for them once. Optimus considered dragging himself and Prowl over to the wall beside the window, to give himself something to lean on. Instead, he took the expedient route of simply falling backwards onto the catwalk, with Prowl thus sprawled on his chest. 

Prowl left their data connections in place longer than Optimus thought he would, but finally their keys retracted, lock panels closed. Optimus shuttered his optics as they became two very separate bots again. Prowl drew his arms up and rested his chin on his hands on Optimus’ chest. 

“And I want my decoy unit back, slag it.”


End file.
